1. Field of the Invention
The invention is related to data processing and, more particularly, to a method and apparatus for packet error detection on a multi-lane serial link.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Recently, serial link has been widely used in data transmission because of its high speed. Serial link is composed of lanes. As a result, bandwidth of the serial link depends on numbers of its lane.
There are many kinds of serial link, such as PCI express and USB 3.0. Take PCI express as an example, data transfer over PCI express bus link interface is based on data packets. Two packet formats, TLP (transaction layer packet) and DLLP (data link layer packet), are defined in the serial specification. A receiver of a serial link should identify packet format, and accordingly perform the processes of receiving, buffering and transferring data.
FIGS. 1A and 1B respectively illustrate packet formats of TLP and DLLP defined in the serial specification. As shown in FIG. 1A, a TLP packet has 1-byte start framing symbol 111, 2-byte sequence number 112, 3 or 4-doubleword header 113, 0˜4 Kbyte data 114 (should be multiple of 4), 8-byte CRC data 115 and 1-byte end framing symbol 116. As shown in FIG. 1B, a DLLP packet has 1-byte start framing symbol 121, 4-byte data 122, 2-byte CRC data 123 and 1-byte end framing symbol 124.